Korea, Rural Korea Tourism, Seoul Life, Travel

Explore Rural Korea: Pyeongchang Eoreumchi Village

After Cheongyang, I went to Pyeongchang Eoreumchi Village on the second day of my Rural Korea adventure. In case you missed it, I decided to go for 3 day-trips in one weekend with the Explore Rural Korea shuttle bus. If you want to know how to utilize their (free) service, go to my Cheongyang review 🙂

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UPDATE: This shuttle bus is not in service anymore. There are other tours available if you really want to visit this area.

It took around 3 and a half hours to get to Pyeongchang from Seoul and by the time we reached, we did not have enough time to go to the filming site so we went directly for lunch.

We had korean food for lunch, with good bulgogi and some kind of pork patty. If you have any dietary requirements, let the guide know and he or she will arrange something for you!

There is a fish museum nearby the restaurant and after you are done eating, you can opt to go to the museum but you will need to pay an entrance fee of 2,000 KRW separately. We chose not to go to the museum and walked around a nearby river and bridge instead since we only had 30 minutes after we finished our food.

Baengnyong Cave (백룡동굴)

By the time we reached the cave, it was 1.15pm and we still had to sign some insurance registration before we were asked to change into the cave tour gear. I had no idea what we were going to do in the cave but by the way we needed to get insurance and wear special gear, I knew it was going to be an exciting adventure~

We were given these red overalls (we were asked to not wear anything inside the overalls because they said the cave would not be cold), a helmet with a head lamp, rubber boots and a emergency belt. I was quite bummed when they asked us to not bring anything with us including the camera and they reassured us that the guide (Another guide, special to the cave activity) will take some photos for us and send us.

Well he did eventually take our photos but.. the resolution of the photos that were sent to us was so bad and they refused to give better quality photos although he did use a pretty decent camera. So, sorry in advance for all the bad resolution photos you will see in this post.

After all of us changed into the gear and took photos, we took a short boat ride to the foot of a nearby mountain. Then we had to climb some stairs before we reach the cave entrance.

The whole walk around the cave took around 2 – 2.5 hours from the start to the end and back again to the entrance. The cave was totally dark and we had to rely on our head lamps to see where we are going. We stopped quite a lot of times as we walk and the guide will then tell us about our surroundings with the help of a huge lamp he brought with him.

Initially the walk was pretty okay but around half an hour into the cave, I found out why we had to wear such gear. Some parts of the cave were muddy and there were puddles of water, some parts had very low ceilings and we had to either crawl or bend down to walk through that part. There were some parts where we had to lay flat on the ground and pulled ourselves forward because of the small space we had to pass through (just look at the photo above).

We came out dirty and muddy but happy. It was really an enjoyable and fun experience but definitely not recommended for older people or for young infants.

Unfortunately when we got out of the cave, it was already 4PM so we did not have time to go for the zipline or sky jump 🙁 We then went back to Seoul and because of the demonstrations in Gwanghwamun that day, we could not be dropped of in Gwanghwamun and ended up dropping of at Gangnam instead. The demonstration also caused a jam and we took around 3.5 hours to get back. At the end, we spent most of our day in the bus.. But the cave experience was really so fun so it was okay 🙂

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